


Day Twelve: An Unexplained Incident

by Euphorion



Series: Writober [12]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Jealousy, M/M, implied zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-23 04:12:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8313568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euphorion/pseuds/Euphorion
Summary: “--reports this morning of what looks to be a very carefully staged Halloween prank, albeit one that has caused this local shopkeeper hundreds of dollars in property damage.
  The incident occurred around 2 AM this morning at the gas station across the street from Minamoto cemetery. According to security footage, a young man who has obscured his face entered the store and attempted to buy eight boxes of strawberry and chocolate pocky. When he was paying, the cashier noticed that his hands were covered in blood. He asked the man if he was okay, to which the customer started to respond. However, whatever he said seemed to be a signal to his accomplice outside, because at this point—really, it’s easier just to show you.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> you might not need to read any of the rest of this AU to understand this but if you wanted to read [day five](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8221477) & [day seven](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8254903) you might get more out of it.

“—reports this morning of what looks to be a very carefully staged Halloween prank, albeit one that has caused this local shopkeeper hundreds of dollars in property damage.

The incident occurred around 2 AM this morning at the gas station across the street from Minamoto cemetery. According to security footage, a young man who has obscured his face entered the store and attempted to buy eight boxes of strawberry and chocolate pocky. When he was paying, the cashier noticed that his hands were covered in blood. He asked the man if he was okay, to which the customer started to respond. However, whatever he said seemed to be a signal to his accomplice outside, because at this point—really, it’s easier just to show you.”

The reporter tapped his papers on his desk, struggling to keep his face under control, and then the footage rolled.

It was grainy, the camera positioned above the store so that the counter and the front window could be easily seen. The young man—dressed in black, his jacket hood up—gathered an armful of boxes of pocky and brought them to the counter. He held out a few bills, the shopkeeper said something, and then the front window exploded inward.

Midorima stared at the screen, startled. He expected to see the front bumper of a car, or at the very least a man with a sledgehammer. Instead, he saw a fist. It, and the man who stepped through the glass after it, looked distorted, oversized, like they’d been pasted in from other footage at the wrong scale, and inexpertly—his movement was disjointed, shambling. He swept an arm across a shelf, knocking the wares to the ground. The shopkeeper fled; the customer, instead of following suit, ran towards the shambling figure. After what appeared to be some conversation, the customer piled his pocky boxes in the figure’s arms, gathered up a few other small items in his own, and ushered him back through the broken window and away.

The footage cut back to the newscaster, but Midorima spoke before he could. “That was Murasakibara.”

Takao stirred from his end of the couch. “What?”

Midorima raised a shaking hand, pointing at the screen, where the newscaster had a close-up of the shambling figure’s face. It was blurry, but there was no mistaking that stature combined with that fall of hair. If the footage had been in color, he was sure it would have been purple. “That,” he managed, “is Murasakibara.”

Takao stared between him and the screen. “Your friend from middle school, the one who died in that accident—”

Midorima nodded, his heart stuttering in his chest. “That’s him.”

Takao slid his toes out from where he’d tucked them under Midorima’s thigh. “You think your dead friend and some mysterious accomplice robbed a gas station last night.”

Midorima pushed his glasses up his nose. “I don’t like your tone.”

Takao rolled his eyes at him. “Sorry, next time I’ll remember my manners when I call you batshit crazy, Shin- _sama_.” 

Midorima’s lip curled. “I think I prefer -chan,” he said, and then immediately cursed himself as unthinking.

Takao widened his eyes at him comically. “You like when I call you Shin-chan, Shin-sama? But it seems so undignified, so beneath you.”

Midorima made himself scowl. Once, it would have been real—he would have been filled only with annoyance at Takao’s needling. Now it was a struggle not to chuckle at him.

 _Soft_ , he chided himself. _You are letting your guard down without being sure of your victory._

“I will point out that at a party just last week you watched a friend of yours gather his own foot from the floor after it had dropped off.” He raised his eyebrows, allowed himself a small smile. “Should I take it personally that you refuse to believe my word that some similar occult incident has occurred again?”

Takao stared at him. “Jesus,” he said, and then stood up, shrugging on his coat. “Fine. Let’s go.”

Midorima blinked at him. “Go?” he asked. “Go where?”

Takao settled his jacket on his shoulders. “The cemetery, obviously,” he said, and held out his hand.

+

Midorima had always felt there was something almost more morbid about a cemetery in daylight. At night, cemeteries were—for lack of a better word—alive. They were filled with noises and shifting shadows that could have a thousand possible origins, from the mundane to the supernatural. A cemetery at night is a place of endless, unreal possibility. 

In the daytime, however, it was like walking through a bleak and beautiful outdoor hospital where all the patients slept, never to wake up again. Except, apparently, for the ones who did.

Perhaps that was why he let himself draw closer to Takao, taking comfort in the nearness and the uncompromisingly warm life of him.

It wasn’t hard to find Murasakibara’s grave. For one thing, Midorima had been here before, and had a pretty good sense of the layout of the place. For another, it was cordoned off with caution tape, and the ground there was a muddy mess of loose dirt.

Takao stopped dead a few paces away. “Well i’ll be damned.”

“Watch what you say,” Midorima warned “We don't know what’s happening here. Exclamations like that could become distressingly literal.”

Takao blinked at him, and then his eyes warmed. “Are you worried about me, Shin-chan?”

Midorima felt himself flush. “The dead are walking. If I weren't concerned by that, I truly would be batshit, as you called me earlier.”

Takao grinned. “You know that’s just an overdramatic way of saying yes, right?”

Midorima ignored him, leaning down to pluck something out of the mud. It was a small, wilted flower, its petals a faded lavender. He turned it over and over in his hands.

At his side, Takao stiffened. “Shin-chan.”

Midorima looked up. A few yards away, beneath the curling, skeletal hand of a branchless tree, Akashi was watching them. Midorima straightened, and waited for him to approach. 

He did so slowly, picking his way between the graves, and stopped on the other side of the caution tape. “Shintarou.”

Takao shifted closer to Midorima, their hands brushing, and Midorima remembered his drunken intensity at the Halloween party. He took a breath. “Akashi,” he said as steadily as possible, and linked his pinky finger with Takao’s. “What are you doing here?”

Akashi nodded to the mass of mud between them. “The same as you, I imagine,” he said. “I saw the news.” His mouth curled upward. “Atsushi is as impossible to miss in death as he was in life.”

Midorima narrowed his eyes. “I find I miss him fairly often, actually.”

Akashi pressed a hand to his heart. “A blow,” he acknowledged, “and unfairly struck. I mean no harm.”

He seemed to be entirely sincere. Midorima sighed, disgruntled at himself for reacting to nothing. “I apologize. Have you any idea what's happening here? How this is possible?”

Akashi shook his head, staring down at the grave—just earth, now, dirt robbed of its sacred purpose. “I'll conduct my own investigations,” he said. “I wish you luck in yours.”

Midorima watched him go, and then, with a pang of regret, unlinked his finger from Takao’s. He turned to see his friend staring at him, and ran a hand through his hair, expecting to be questioned on the uncharacteristic contact, to have to put into words this slow drawing-together of souls that he cherished but had no way to explain. Words—imprecise things, too imprecise for the sheer variety of human experience—inevitably changed that which they described, and he had hoped to allow this to remain unspoken until explanations were no longer necessary.

Instead, Takao looked at him with hard eyes. “You never told me you missed Murasakibara.”

Midorima blinked at him, completely thrown. “Of course I miss him,” he said, baffled. “He was my friend.”

Takao shook his head. “But you never said anything. You never tell me anything about what you're feeling, but you open up to _him_ for the sake of an insult?”

Midorima stared at him, taken aback at the bitterness in his voice. “Takao.”

Takao took a breath, closing his eyes and clearly centering himself. “Sorry. Sorry.” When he opened them again they were bright, and soft, and the way Takao had always been with him. “So. Shall we?”

Midorima was acutely aware of standing at a crossroads. There was a path he could take, a line of inquiry he could press, and perhaps it would lead him to where he wanted more than anything to go. But—perhaps it wouldn’t. Nothing but fate was certain, and fate shielded herself always from his eyes.

He raised an eyebrow. “Where are we going?”

Takao grinned. “To go see the only other zombie we know.”

He tucked his hands in the pocket of his jacket, and Midorima followed him, trying to convince himself he’d taken the path of prudence and not that of cowardice.


End file.
